Two gift-gaffe days in a row for Obama administration

posted at 5:40 pm on March 6, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

Yesterday, we talked about the incredibly thoughtless snub from the Obamas to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the traditional gift exchange in Brown’s first visit to the Obama White House. Today, Hillary makes it a gaffetastic week by proving to the Russians that the State Department can’t translate worth a damn:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened her first extended talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by giving him a present meant to symbolize the Obama administration’s vow to “press the reset button” on U.S.-Russia relations.

She handed a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift: a red button on a black base with a Russian word peregruzka printed on top.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton asked.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov said.

Instead of “reset,” Lavrov said the word on the box meant “overcharge.”

Clinton and Lavrov laughed.

Yeah, I’m sure Lavrov laughed. Later, he probably told his deputy, “Tell the crypto guys they can take it easy.”

Some will say, Come on, it’s just a light moment, but let’s think about what Hillary was doing here. She was making fun of the previous administration’s diplomacy with her “reset” button, a rather nasty piece of work. I’ll bet the Bush administration and Condi Rice would have gotten the translation correct before making that joke — and I’d bet even more money they wouldn’t have thought to make fun of Hillary’s husband in that fashion in the first place.

Anyone who remembers a time from the Reagan era on back would know that the last thing you want to give Russia is “the button,” no matter what’s written on it. Why not just give Vietnam a “tripwire of friendship?”

Update II: Closing Velocity notes that the Russians seem inordinately amused at Hillary’s expense. And the Czechs and the Poles aren’t exactly cheering at this development either.

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Hillary Clinton raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe as secretary of state when she mispronounced her EU counterparts’ names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe’s…

A veteran politician, Clinton compared the complex European political environment to that of the two-party U.S. system, before adding:

“I have never understood multiparty democracy.

“It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy.”

Why is it hard to believe that the button “mistake” was intentional – we all know how much Barack “respects” Hillary? The sooner she’s shown to be incompetent, the sooner he can replace her.

And why isn’t it plausible that the Gordon Brown snub was also intentional? Brown has shown himself to be, at least, listening to his pollers and the Brits are fuming over this – less support the next time we ask for cooperation from them?

Obama has given every indication that he doesn’t want to play ball on the old team – he’s building his new team.

I kinda feel sorry for the stooge. They better be on a Grayhound headed for the middle of nowhere with a fake ID, ’cause if SHE catches up to them, there won’t be anything left but some tufts of hair and a red stain.

El Cazador on March 7, 2009 at 3:23 AM

I think the mistranslator is looking at a one way ticket to Fort Marcy Park

What if Clinton used the wrong word on purpose? We just lost Manas AB but the Kyrgs have now said that that deal isn’t closed, the Russians don’t have it, and if you offer us more money and more respect ie more money than you can have it back. What if Hillary is sending a message to the Russians that we are going to make a higher offer on the base and “we won’t let you overcharge us?” ie up your bid?

marklmail, I think its buffoonery over “calculated”…I mean really, “calculated” would require some smarts, and this Obaministration has repeatedly shown they gots no smarts. Living in a circus town as I do (Sarasota), good buffoonery also reqires smarts, so this is just plain stupidity.

Is it a stretch? Coldwarrior, what scores do linguists at the State Department have to have to work there? Coming out of DLI the first time they wanted you to have a mix 3’s and 2’s and that was just to keep in your MOS and not be shipped off to cook’s school if I remember correctly.

She was making fun of the previous administration’s diplomacy with her “reset” button, a rather nasty piece of work.

1) I’m sure you said the same thing about Carter’s foreign policy.

2) She wasn’t making fun of the previous administration. Once again I realize that hypersensitive partisan hacks with little personal conviction like Ed just think different. Do you like MacBooks? Anyway… It’s a symbolic gesture with the most transparent meaning. There’s a new Administration in the White House. Let’s all start from scratch. Which it won’t be. But let’s pretend. Only a true moron would seriously suggest that Hillary would go anywhere with the message that nothing has changed from Bush’s era. But then maybe despite Rush’s clarification, there’re people who truly want Obama to fail at everything good.
3) It’s indeed strange that nobody in the State Department who was preparing this meeting speaks Russian fluently.

I cringed when I saw the RED BUTTON. With the Russians, you simply can’t joke about that, no matter the intent. That button is the symbol of the USSR’s fall from power. Even more cringe-worthy was her mashing her hand over his to “reset” it.

WRT to the origin of the “smart” idea for this prop, that it was entirely her idea is fully plausible. Why not? Surely there isn’t anyone that really believes her claim to experience in talking with foreign leaders. This is simply an Empress wearing no clothes.

She simply ass-u-med that this gag would be a two-fer, a)snub Bush, b) demonstrate her foreign smarts. She accomplished in making an ass of herself twice over with the mistranslation, while demonstrating to all Russians that she’s a novice at the grandmaster’s game.

Nah, she don’t have to worry about getting thrown under the bus when she can do it to herself. And you can be sure that Russian comedians will make hay out of “overcharge”.

***
That EASY BUTTON gives this old radar and missile engineer a bad thought.
***
Adding some C4, a detonator, and a battery to the box would be a great way to get some REGIME CHANGE YOU COULD BELIEVE IN!
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Maybe Hillary will drop it off on Putin’s desk a little later. SMART POWER indeed.
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John Bibb
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Look at it this way. At least she didn’t hand out a 25 dvd collection of classic American movies and two toy helicopters. That would have been taken as the supreme insult

Instead, she made all Russians feel superior, not just for the way she had ‘Kick Me’ taped in her back, but for the childish, moronic nature of the button itself. There is a pride in the Russian culture towards the highbrow

Joking about the button. Clever that. Goes well with jokes about war memorials and famine roasts

She could have brought anything in the world as a gift and she brought the idiot button. The only thing missing was the clown suit and a honking clown horn. She showed a deep understanding of the Russian persona

It’ll be okay. I hear that Putin loved the platform shoes and zoot suit that prez-uh-DENT Zero sent him. The crate of slightly used U. of Chicago Medical Center office supplies Michelle sent to Putin was also warmly received.

Do tell. Tell me about the siliviki and Putin’s private government? Tell me about the thousands arrested weekely, or beaten by the militsia for daring to exercise simple freedom of assembly. Tell me about journalists being killed by Putin’s thugs for daring to challenge the Putin regime. Tell me about Tsar Vladimir I and his desire to rebuild an even greater Russian-dominated Empire across Europe and Asia than existed under the Soviets. Tell me about Putin making an agreement with Ukraine regarding gas and then deciding that the agreement wasn’t at all favorable to Russia, or not punitive enough toward Ukraine. Tell me about a larger percentage of what is left of the Russian economy being devoted to Putin’s thugs and an expanded military.

As for the bears…

How long does it take a Russian bear, walking at 5 miles per hour to walk from Moscow to St. Petersburg?

[In theory, about 25 days. In reality…never. The bear would be eaten before it got past the Moscow suburbs…one bear can feed a Russian family these days for a couple weeks.]

As usual, you’re absolutely right. Had 4 years of British English, before going all American. No British accent, though, just a somewhat Sweedish one, due to other languages’ influence, ahead of learning English.

Just an after-thought about these socialist types…they’ve spent their entire life learning about Lenin and Stalin and Marx, reading Saul Alinsky and studying at the knees of “Frank”, and yet they’ve NEVER learned about having “class”. They are rude, uneducated about how to carry on polite conversation, and how to deport themselves in social circles.
Thank God “Pillary” wears pants, I’d hate for her to show her hairy legs to the world while she tries to speak for us.

Yep, all that time wasted learning about class struggle, forgetting what class and classiness is all about.

What they do not understand is that exercising class, real class, the same as good manners, is a sign of respect to those you address.

And respect…that is what diplomacy, real diplomacy, is all about.

Still chaffing, years later, about how the Clinton’s left the King and Queen of Norway standing outside the White House for over 20 minutes…an official state visit, and then blaming it on the White House Social Secretary, as if that would expunge the faux pas. {I was part of the planning for that particular visit. The Norwegians were not impressed. The Royal pair were gracious, but obviously a bit miffed.)

It’s hard to imagine it any worse than The One. She has a little more public office experience than Obama. They are both equally unrefined. He might be a better puppet. She might be better at covert manipulation. They are both more ideologically hard-left driven that other democrat leaders.
I don’t know if she could ram the socialist agenda down america’s throat as quickly as Obama is doing it.

This gaffe is worse than you think. The button used is NOT A RESET BUTTON but an e-stop button. When you press an e-stop button it CAUSES A HARD SHUTDOWN to the machinery – it is used in emergencies, like if a body part were to get caught in the machinery. You can tell it is an e-stop by the arrows on the top of button. Of course liberals wouldn’t know anything about that, would they? But when thinking about Sec of State and O’s policies(including his economic policies,) an e-stop may make more sense!

Not a gaffe; She simply gave them the wrong gift. Clearly the “over charge” button gift was meant for the American taxpayers. Hillary just forgot to grab the Rocky IV special edition DVD for the Russians.